


Speech and Ink

by Demigod2405



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hard of Hearing Jughead Jones, M/M, Soul-Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23228620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demigod2405/pseuds/Demigod2405
Summary: A persons' sixteenth birthday is one of great importance, for it is the day they get their word.
Relationships: Jughead Jones/Sweet Pea
Kudos: 73





	Speech and Ink

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Guys, I managed to find some time over the past month to re-write this story to a version I am more proud of.
> 
> Enjoy!

A persons' sixteenth birthday is one of great importance, for it is the day they get their word. Their Soul Word. The word that connects them to their Soulmate. A word that connects them. It could be any word, from an emotion to a colour to an animal. Anything and everything is possible to get. 

Jughead knew all this, of course he did. It was paraded around in every kind of media possible. Soap operas, sitcoms, Hollywood hits, music, photography, books and comics – they all made a mockery of the bond that was Soulmates. Teachers had a special lesson during the year they all turned 15 so that it would be fresh in the kids' mind before they turned 16. It was very ‘destiny’ based and ‘always perfect’ couples that are ‘fated’ to be together. It was very sappy and Jughead had turned his hearing aid off for that lesson. He was lucky in that he had the option to not hear it.

A car crash when he was younger had led to his left ear having damaged hearing leaving about 20% to 30% and no hearing whatsoever in his right. He wore a hearing aid in his left ear to help him, but he didn’t in his right as there was no point. His iconic crown beanie was his attempt to hide the bulky device away from his bullies who used to try to take and break it. They couldn’t afford anything other than the basic one and they defiantly couldn’t afford to replace it if they broke it. It left a high pitch electric static in his ear that he was almost numb to by now and sometimes it shorted out, giving him a little shock now and then.

Jughead didn’t tend to complain about his hearing aid given that it was him losing his hearing that started the breaking of his family apart. This stage had started when a drunk father had driven to pick his youngest child up from her dance practice with his elder child in the car. He had run through a red light and it ended with a motorbike slamming into the passenger side of the car. His father was fine but the shards from the smashed window found their way into Jugheads’ ears. It tore his hearing drum in his right ear completely, the one facing the window, and ‘damaged’ the other. His mother had freaked, screaming “what if Jellybean had been in the car?” Jughead knew that his mother didn’t like him. At least, she didn’t like who he was, but it still hurt. 

Jughead was very aware of the arguments his parents had over him and his gender.

After the accident, the tension in their family had bubbled over the rim and Jughead ended up being woken up in the night to his mother bundling him and his sister into the car and driving off. Jughead had lasted a month with his mother in Toledo before his mother gave up trying to ‘fix the male mind washing of your father’ and put him on a bus back to Riverdale. Except when he returned home, he found the house empty and a story from a neighbour informing him his father was carted away one night in a police car and was now in prison. Jughead had sat on the front porch all night crying to him-self and praying for a saviour. He was lucky in the fact that he got one.

Fred Andrews was driving past on his way home when he saw his sons’ best friend huddled in the cold and decided to take him back home. It took a little getting used to, but he enjoyed it. He knew that Archie enjoyed having a little ‘brother’ to play with and Mrs Andrews knew enough about him to help him through the, as she called it, ‘Shark Week’. Jughead had originally been given his own room but that didn’t last long. One of Mr Andrews business partners had come around and lost his temper at something and yelled at the top of his lungs. Jughead had gotten spooked and spent the next hour cuddled up to Archie in his bed. That night all the old memories had come rushing back and he ended up in Archies’ bed. They moved him in there not soon after and he still hasn’t left to this day.

It was a few months after he moved in with the Andrews that he saw Mr Andrews’ Word. The word ‘Partners’ was scribbled on his wrist, often hidden under work shirt cuffs or fancy watches, in his own fathers’ messy drunken scrawl. Jughead had seen the same word before, in far neater writing, on his fathers’ wrist. Both his fathers’ and Mr Andrews’ words weren’t black like they always start at but vibrant green. His father had told him of when they had changed the first time they referred to each other as ‘business partners’. Father had been ecstatic and had rushed to tell Mr Andrews the moment he realised who it was. Only for them to get into a fight over fathers’ involvement in the Serpents before father could roll his sleeve up. After that Father had chosen to keep their bond a secret, not wanting to force his Soulmate into a bond he wasn’t happy with. He had decided to leave it and wait for Mr Andrews to come to him. He never did…

\----------------

All of this was going through Jugheads’ mind as he lay awake on the mattress and blanket/pillow nest he had created over the years of living with the Andrews. Archie was heavily snoring away up on the bed next to him and Jughead smiled. It had taken him some time to get used to Archies’ snoring but at this point, it was like white noise to him and he fell asleep easier when Arch was there. Jughead did wonder how Veronica was going to put up with that, she always seemed like the type to need silence to sleep. Speaking of Veronica, Jughead twisted his line of vision from the shapes in the ceiling to Archie in the bed and his wrist, hanging limply off the edge of the bed. Archie had the word ‘Cliché’ curling perfectly over his veins. It was shining gold, matching Veronicas’ perfectly. It had been Jughead that had called them a ‘Cliché couple’ after they became the ‘quarterback/head cheerleader’ couple. They weren’t quite the cliché trope, but it had been enough for Jughead and them. They had turned to each other and Veronica had said in a breathy voice “Yeah we are a cliché, aren’t we?” Their tattoos glowing and shining not long after.

That left Jughead wondering what his Word would be, who it would connect him to and what they would be like. Would they accept him, as him? He wouldn’t know until midnight, that was how it worked. No one had any concrete reasoning why it was this way, all the way back as far as the records they had allowed them to know. Another thing they did have any concrete evidence for was the whole ‘soulmate’ choosing process. The most accepted answer was the most science-driven one and the most religious one. The religious one was obviously that God decided who was perfect with who and what was going to bond them and how. Jughead did like that idea – mostly because it would give him someone to curse and yell at if things went south. However, if he had to choose one to publicly support then he would probably speak for the scientific explanation. That the atoms attracted to each other at the start of the universe continued to be attracted to each other over time. That way the atoms that created them kept pulling them together again and again, over years and lives.

There was still nothing to explain the Words yet, but people were trying.

Suddenly a sharp but blunt feeling pressed into the skin of his wrist and snapped his attention out of his head and back to the present. It kinda felt like someone was pressing a biro into his skin with no regard to how his skin stretched and moved with the pen. He waited until the tingling sharp feeling stopped abruptly like the pen had been lifted off his skin as the word was finished. He waited a little more just for the hell of it before lifting his wrist to his face and looking at the black ink on his skin. The characters フラワーズ were drawn onto his wrist, staring back at him. His soulmate was of Asian descent then. That was how the Words worked, they were written in your soulmates’ first language. The universe or God or whatever had decided that Sign Language was an official language, as was Braille. Those whose soulmates had those as their soulmates would have pictures of the signs or raised dots – kinda like black moles.

That helped Jughead narrow his search. He took a picture on his phone and emailed it to himself as he could not stand to use the internet on his phone. Once the laptop was booted up, he first started with Google. A reverse image search took him threw a few websites that seemed to point him in the direction of Japanese. It took a little more research into just Japanese to figure out what the characters stood for, “Furawāzu” (Foo-ah-wah-zo) the traditional Japanese way of saying ‘flowers’. His soul word was ‘flowers’. Huh.

Jughead shrugged and put his laptop away before snuggling back into his nest and deciding to worry about it later.

\---------

Later came in the form of Archie shaking him awake by his shoulders’ the next morning with a beaming grin on his face, demanding to see his word. Soul Words weren’t private things by any means if anything it was better to let people know what you had so you could find ‘the other one’ faster. Jughead wasn’t personally bothered either way. He would like to find his match sure, if only for the reason that he could figure out his life faster if he had all the parts, but it wasn’t as important to him as much as it was to a romantic like Archie.

“Arch, I’ve just woken up. Gimmie a minute!” Archie proceeded to pull out his pouting puppy look. It worked on almost everyone except Jughead. Jughead had lived with the Andrews long enough to be immune to by this point so he just ignored the older teen and flopped back down into his nest and closing his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, he could still feel the overgrown Labrador practically vibrating next to him so he eventually sighed and lifted his arm, wrist up, towards Archie.

“The fuck does that say?” Jughead huffed at Archies’ harsh words,

“It’s Japanese Arch, for flowers. My word is Flowers”

“Huh” Archies’ brows furrowed for a moment, and he cocked his head to the side before his eyes shot open and he screeched, falling backwards onto the floor.

“Holy fuck what if it’s Reggie!” Jughead paused and thought it over in his head. Reggie  _ was _ one of the few Asian descendants in Riverdale. Or at least on the North-Side. He didn’t know if there were any on the South-Side and even if there was, he didn’t know if he wanted to meet them then. He didn’t want his soulmate to be a petty criminal or god forbid a Serpent. He didn’t want to have to deal with that aspect of his life coming back to life.

If it is Reggie, then he’ll be the best person for me. If not, I’ll walk out on him. Easy.” Archie didn’t seem to be convinced but he let it slide and left Jughead to get ready for school on his own.

Mr Andrews was already at the breakfast table waiting for them, toast and orange juice already served, and he smiled as his boys fell through the doorway. Archie happily took a seat and started tucking into the food spread out before him. Jughead, however, did the same thing he did every morning since his arrival to the Andrews’, he went up to Mr Andrews and gave him a tight hug and whispered “Thank You” in his ear. Every morning for years he had done this and for the first few months, Mr Andrews had tried to stop him – to no avail. Now he just hugged him back and said: “You’re welcome Jug” before directing him to sit and placing more than his fair share of toast on Jugheads’ plate.

\------------------

By the time they were ready to leave, Archie had listed every Asian in the North-Side along with all their pros and cons. Reggie and his cons being the most prominent of the lot. Jughead had tuned him out the moment he had started the list, letting the words enter one ear and leave through the other. It lasted to school and Archie had seemingly not realised that his ‘brother’ wasn’t listening to a thing. Once they had reached the front doors Jughead had finally had enough of the tirade.

“Arch” The red-heads’ mouth clicked closed as Jughead spun on his heels to face him. “we don’t know. We can’t make guesses without more evidence.” It was with this that Jughead waved his brother goodbye and made his way inside the building, ignoring the Serpent bikes parked out front. They had been a fixture for a while. Some ‘Ghoulie’ kid had burnt South-Side High down so now Riverdale high was accommodating the students. Jughead tried to avoid them as much as he could. He had been picked to show a group of them around on their first day only for him to get the three ‘Teen Leaders’. The ‘king regent and his lackeys’, however you wanted to say it. Jughead had noticed that the other teenage Serpents didn’t move forward until one of those three did. Most prominently the mountain of a boy that seemed to ooze leadership and confidence.

Fangs, Toni and Sweetie were all buff, brash and bitchy to others. They all wore punk clothes and matching jackets with switchblades in the pockets. The only thing Jughead cared about was that the Serpent logo had changed. The reason Jughead cared about the Logo changing? He was the one that had bloody designed it. The logo tended to change with each new king or queen that took over from the last but the fact that his father had changed it both when he became king (to Jugheads’ design) and after he left the family left a little sting in Jugheads’ heart. Sitting with his father and designing the logo, not much more than a scrawl at such a young age, was one of the few good childhood memories he had.

Still, he didn’t make a fuss about it, after all, there was no reason to. He just continued to walk through the school and ignore everybody around him. He dodged between sweaty teenage bodies and made it to his locker undisturbed. A few girls shrieked at the top of their lungs making him wince, prompting him to reach under his hat and turn his aid down slightly. He couldn’t afford to turn it off completely when traversing the corridors. He had tired that in middle school and proceeded to miss a fire drill prompting the school to go into lockdown when they realised that a student was missing. 

Once his locker was organised and he moved to walk off, he proceeded to walk straight into a Serpent jacket.

“What the-“ Jughead grabbed for his bag and checked that his laptop was okay. It seemed like it was, but he hadn’t tried to turn it on yet so that conclusion wasn’t set in stone yet.

“If you wanted a date Jones you could have just asked for it, ya didn’t have to fall for me!” Was said in the distance and Jughead looked up at the Serpent he ran into – Sweetie. Great.

Sweetie was one of the serpents that Jughead had shown around on that first day. Ever since then, he had flirted relentlessly with Jughead and touched him at every opportunity although Jughead had a hard time disliking it to be honest. The larger serpent was always warm to the touch when he threw an arm around Jugheads’ shoulders and Jughead always got the hint of some floral scent when that happened. It was soothing.

“Fuck off Sweets, not in your life” The larger man let out a deep laugh, throwing his head back, and Jughead felt something shift in his chest. He watched the Adams' apple move under tan skin and had the sudden urge to bite it. He startled,  _ where the fuck did that come from? _ Still, Sweetie was lowering his head back down and Jughead was forced to shake himself out of the stupor or look suspicious, so he gave a gentle smile and made to move around the far taller man. He wasn’t able to get far though as Sweetie swung his arm out and blocked Jugheads’ path.

“Wanna come to Pops’ tonight with me? Us. Me, Fangs and Toni” Jughead frowned and tried to read the emotions on Sweeties’ face. He was – open, for lack of better work, almost vulnerable. If a Serpent could be vulnerable that is, “A serpent never shows weakness” and all that. Jughead tilted his head and thought of the free food.

“You buy and we’ve got a deal.”

“See you then”

\----------------------

Dinner dates started happening almost every day from there on out. Most times Sweetie was the one that invited him, bribing him with free food and intelligent company. Sometimes it was all four of them converging on a booth at Pops, sometimes less doing the same thing. It started when Fangs began dating Kevin and dropped out on a lot of the meetings to spend time with his boyfriend. Mostly trying to butter the Sheriff up and get his and Kevins’ relationship parent-approved. It increased when Toni somehow managed to date Cheryl and dropped out of the meetups’ as well. With those facts in motion, it ended up just being Sweetie and him together most nights and Jughead found he loved it like that. Sweetie had started to bring flowers to their meetups when he knew that it would just be him and Jug. Jughead had blushed bright red the first time and hid his face in said flowers, he had felt Sweeties laugh more than heard it when the larger man curled his arms around Jugheads’ smaller frame and pulled him in. Jughead had ended up nicknaming him ‘my flower boy’. He also had a surprisingly witty sense of humour and more than enough intelligence to keep up with Jughead on most topics. The more time they spent together the more Jughead found himself,  _ wanting _ to be with Sweetie. All the time. If got too solid to ignore on the night where Jughead had worked through the two nights before completing an essay he had forgotten about in favour of a Blue&Gold article, where Sweetie had taken one look at Jugheads’ slumped form in the booth before pulling Jug into his side and letting him fall asleep like that. Warm and comfy and safe.

It all came to a head when Sweetie made the first move. He had driven Jughead back to the Andrews’ after another dinner together and had proceeded to shuffle about on his bike, rubbing the back of his neck, until Jughead had asked what the hell had gotten into him. Sweetie had swallowed and stood before offering Jughead his hands, something Jughead had gladly taken, and hesitantly asked for a kiss. Jughead had frozen for less than a second before smiling gentle and had gladly responded with a soft nod. He had gotten to taste the spice on the taller mans’ tongue as it danced with his own, it was as his ankles started to protest him being on his toes for so long that Mr Andrews had come out and not so subtly threatened Sweetie with castration. Jughead was honoured that Mr Andrews saw him as enough of his son to do that but on the other hand, he had just had his first kiss with a handsome serpent that brought him flowers and kinda wanted to continue it.

It was luck on his part that he ended up having plenty of opportunities to do so. They turned their daily dinners at Pops into dates with movies before-hand, arcade trips after and kiss on the doorstep at the end. A few weeks had passed when Jughead suggested that they go elsewhere. Because of that, they started to leave town on the weekends. Sweetie taking them up into the forest on his bike for them to stay in the Andrews’ lakeside cabin together – courtesy of Mr Andrews not wanting to see one of his sons make out with his serpent boyfriend on the doorstep. The cabin was one big open plan room, separated with wooden walls that provided privacy but didn’t connect to make a separate room. Chance was that it had been designed that way as it meant that lighting the fire in the ‘living room’ ended up warming the whole cabin. It was up there, on a muggy summer night full of fireflies in the sky, that Jughead lost his virginity. Watching the little balls of light float past the window as he played with the silver ring on Sweeties’ hand, said hand and attached arm being flung over Jugheads’ middle – keeping him curled against the larger tan chest behind him. It was up there that he and Sweetie told each other they loved them for the first time. A few weeks having passed, now they were comfortably in fall. Archie had been bugging him to go apple picking with the redhead and Jughead ended that day by grabbing Sweetie round the waist by his locker and begging him to flee the town with him for the weekend. Sweetie had readily agreed and admitted that Kevin had managed to get Fangs apple picking the day before, except that Fangs didn’t eat apples after a loose tooth incident in his childhood so he had pawned the apples off on Sweetie and Toni. Sweetie had packed up the apples he had and the spices they needed while Jughead had grabbed the rest of the ingredients needed for spiced apple cider before they mounted the bike and left for some alone time. They had drunk way too much strong cider and ended up dozing by the fireplace before Jughead had started watching the firelight caress the tattoo on Sweeties thumb. He had twisted around and started tracing Sweeties face before he whispered the words into the still air between them. He hadn’t realised what he said until Sweetie said it back. 

It was perfect and Jughead could feel the thoughts of his soulmate and his soul word fall further and further back into his mind as the days passed. He didn’t care. He had Sweetie, his flower boy.

They had dated for a year before shit started to happen around him. Jason Blossom was pulled from the lake and Tonis’ life now consisted of both comforting her girlfriend and helping her with a murder investigation. Jughead and his friends became detectives and found out some stuff they probably shouldn’t have. Jugheads’ piece of shit father found his way back into his life and seemed to be sticking there. But through all this, Jughead still had flowers brought to be him and still had a larger strong man to lean on for strength, and he was (mostly) happy.

It wasn’t until riot night that stuff became un-changeable and Jughead was forced to choose a loyalty. He had woken up in the Blue&Gold room at school after falling asleep writing. It was getting dark outside and Jughead shot a text off to Sweetie explaining the situation before packing his stuff and starting to leave the school. He ended up freezing when he caught Archies’ voice fading from down a corridor. He had sneaked t outside the closed door and started a recording on his phone, just in case. It ended up working out for him as the conversation he recorded was between his brother and friends. “To kill a snake, you need to cut off the head” Betty had such a venomous tone to her voice that Jughead had had to swallow before accusations left his mouth. “When the Serpents came to my house-“ Jughead had straightened at that, he hadn’t been aware that the Serpents had visited the Andrews’ residence. “- the other Serpent teens didn’t move to the door, they stayed on the sidewalk. They didn’t move till-“ His hearing aid cut out and Jughead cursed the cheap thing as he ducked down and looked through the keyhole. What he saw shot endless panic through him and he proceeded to sprint out if the school. He had run to his father and tried to warn him but his father leads him down into the basement to ‘look over some plans’ only to lock the door behind him and trap Jughead. He had escaped by using his pocket-knife to loosen the screws on a vent and crawling out. He had spun on the spot until he saw the retreating backs of the adult Serpents heading for their fight, so he ran the opposite way to the Teen fight. He ran and stumbled and fell through the forest to reach the side-lines as he witnessed his brother and boyfriend fighting before seeing Veronica pull out the same gun he saw in the school and point it at Sweetie.

Jughead had screamed and shouted but wasn’t able to tell if he was being heard or not over the storm raging around him, flinging dead leaves into his face. He saw Veronica take a deep breath and he knew that his boyfriends' life saw coming to its end. He forgets to think and springs forward, shoving his boyfriend out of the way. Jughead took the shot. Straight into his hearing aid. The doctors called a miracle, any slight difference in situation or bullet angle and Jughead would have been dead on impact with a bullet in his brain. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t dead – just deaf.

With no hearing aid, Jughead had had to be declared legally deaf in both ears. It was hard, made harder by the fact that, just like his childhood, his father refused to learn ASL to communicate with his son. Luckily he didn’t care much as the others had, learning all the phrases they regularly used around him and his they couldn’t – they made sure t face him so he could read their lips. And if that still didn’t work, they’d text him.

His life changed for the better when Toni had texted him what the Serpents had done in their chemistry class that day, except that she had used the words “Fangs, Sweet Pea and I had-“. He had interrupted her and asked who the hell “Sweet Pea” was. They had stared at him like he was insane until Fangs showed him his screen, an arrow pointing to Fangs’ right, to… Sweetie. Oh.

Jughead turned bright red and groaned out, “I thought your name was Sweetie.” A fond smile and a headshake was his answer. Jughead had smiled back and paused, a thought creating itself in his head. He laughed silently and a few seconds later a text popped up from Sweet Pea.  _ What’s so funny? _ “We both have flowers as our names, what are the fucking odds!” Jughead went still as the same sharp pressure that made itself known on the morning of his sixteenth birthday surfaced once again. He shrugged Sweeties’ – Sorry, Sweet Peas’ – jacket from his shoulders and watched as the Japanese characters on his wrist bled a deep blue, the same colour as the plaid shirt Sweets was wearing at that moment. The shirt that Jughead had stolen multiple times and often wore to bed. His favourite.

He watched Sweets’ took that studded bracelet of his off and trace the word on his wrist. Then he unlocked his phone and sent a text –  _ What the hell kinda flower is a ‘Jughead’ _ . Jug laughed and simply said,

“My dead name was Forsythia. Which is a flower.” He smiled and was met with a soft warm one in return. He was going to be fine. He had his flower boy after all.


End file.
